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SUMMARY: Tikrit is the first major Sunni city retaken from the Islamic State militants, who were pushed out of that stronghold with the help of U.S. airstrikes and Shia fighters -- some of whom are backed and equipped by Iran. But the struggle for national reconciliation is far from over, with accusations of looting and revenge attacks. Special correspondent Jane Arraf reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And we turn now to an on-the-ground report from Iraq.
NewsHour special correspondent Jane Arraf brings us this story from Tikrit.
JANE ARRAF (NewsHour): This courtyard in Tikrit has become a place of pilgrimage and a reason to fight. The plaque commemorates what is believed to be one of the biggest massacres in modern Shia history.
Shortly after ISIS took over Mosul and Tikrit last June, it executed hundreds of young air force cadets and army recruits from nearby Camp Speicher. At least 200 were believed to have been executed here, killed because they were military and they were Shia.
“We have offered our youth, the best of our youth to Iraq and the Iraqi people,” says a representative of one of Iraq’s most revered Shia clerics. “We have achieved our liberty through the martyrs of Camp Speicher.”
Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia responded to a fatwa by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calling on them to work with the Iraqi military to fight the Islamic State group. His representative says they don’t need American help, just more Iraqi assistance.
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